“I thought I had good stuff,”, said Connor Hurst after throwing 103 pitches and striking out Damon Lambert with a called strike fastball. Hurst become just the second PEBA player to throw a perfect game, and the first in the Imperial League with a 6-0 victory over the New Orleans Trendsetters. “I didn’t really think it was great stuff…but it worked, and that’s all that matters.”

Hurst managed to throw 72 of his 103 pitches for strikes. Eight Trendsetters were struck out in front of a crowd of 35,000. Even though Hurst might not have thought much of his effort, his opponents did.

“I was looking at that stuff on video in the dugout,” New Orleans player Dave Nash said. “It didn’t seem to help me, though.” Nash was a three-time strikeout victim. “We were talking in the dugout about how Hurst was throwing aspirin out there.”

“I don’t know,” Hurst said. “I mean, when you face someone like [Tsumemasa] Morimoto, a guy that who can hit it right out of the park and you can get him to foul off two pitches and then get him to bite on a pitch – that’s what really feels great. I just wanted to get the win more than anything else.”

Hurst got a lot of help from his teammates, as the normally anemic Statesmen offense provided six runs. “We were really happy for Black Jack,” Héctor Cruz said after the game. “But in those late innings, I think we were all on edge. Everyone knew what was going on; that scoreboard out in left is gigantic. You can’t ignore that big zero.”

“I think it gives us a lot of confidence that we have pitchers that can get guys out,” Statesmen manager Aric Kinast said. “We’ve had to lean pretty hard on our pitching staff, and it’s starting to show. With Black Jack out there rising to the occasion, it makes us confident that if we can just get some hitting, we can contend. Maybe not this year, but in the future, and soon.”

So what was Hurst going to do after the game? “Well, I’m not going to go crazy. Don’t expect any fireworks.” He smiled. “It does seem a bit happier though. And Bishop [Enrique Méndez] gave me the game ball; you can bet that’s going somewhere safe.”